A recent report in New Scientist showed that smoking cannabis has been linked to having a small brain at least if the dope is taken in large doses, over a long period. Researchers at the University of Melbourne, Austrailia scanned the brains of 15 heavy users, who had smoked at least 5 joints daily for …
Almost half of the all Americans and Europeans died of coronary artery disease in the last half of the 1990’s. The pharmaceutical industry literally makes billions of dollars a year promoting and selling their statin drugs as the solution to this heart disease. However, researchers and doctors are just beginning to realized that statins are …
Teenagers with TVs in their bedrooms become slobbier, according to a survey of 780 17-year-olds in US schools. The study published in Pediatrics found teens with a set in their rooms watched more TV than those who didn’t, ate fewer vegetables, drank more sugary drinks, spent less time exercising and achieved worse grades at school. …
When the Soviet empire began to unravel in 1989, Cubans were hit with serious food shortages. From 1991 to 1995, people were getting only about 1800 calories a day and had to walk or cycle wherever they needed to go. The result was halving of the obesity rate to just 7%. In the following years, …
Just recently a close family member suffered a stroke that significantly affected her memory. She had gotten into her car one day leaving the house unlocked and the garage door open and headed off to the mountain to meet a close friend. The only problem was she thought it was 1936 and that she was …
The June 2nd Time magazine ran a cover story titled The truth about vaccines. With the subtitle Worried about autism, many parents are opting out of immunizations. How they’re putting the rest of us at risk. Just a month earlier I read another article in a medical journal titled, Most Mumps Cases Occurred in Immunized …
The practice of entomophagy (en-toh-MOFF-uh-jee) or eating bugs is done in at least 113 countries. The species most commonly eaten were ants, termites and a species of mondo cricket. Surprisingly, or maybe not, insects are more nutritious than beef or pork. For example, crickets contain more than 1,550 milligrams of iron, 25 milligrams of zinc …
Cocoa beans contain a lot of potentially beneficial flavanols . . . more than tea, red wine, apples, or onions. The only problem is flavanol is very bitter and often is taken out when cocoa beans are treated to make them milder. So chances are the better the chocolate tastes, the less beneficial it is. …
Let me begin by quoting an interesting article that appeared in JAMA 100 years ago. A few days ago a famous American surgeon told a friend that it was a constant mortification to him that for his life-work he had not chosen business rather than medicine, and yet the annual income of this particular surgeon …
So often patients will try to increase their serotonin levels by taking only 5-HTP which is converted to serotonin. Increasing serotonin levels in the brain often will help with stabilizing mood swings such as depression and anxiety and insomnia. The problem with this approach is that when only 5-HTP is used it depletes the neurotransmitter …